NEWSLETTER

Edward Durell Stone was my father. Father and I had a tenuous and at times a difficult relationship. He would have found it both comically improbable and deeply touching if he had been aware that I had written his biography. Even though our relationship was distant, I had a closely-held but deeply-seated admiration for his achievements. The underlying impetus to write his biography extends back to my childhood in New York during the 1960s. Anyone who came of age during those years recalls them as a time when activists would champion the rights of people unjustly relegated to living life at the margins of society. It was this sensitivity to injustice and an activist’s desire to right wrongs that set me on the course that led me to submit a proposal to Rizzoli for my father’s biography in the spring of 2008. Simply stated, Father has been unfairly treated for over a half-century, and the time for him to be accorded the simple decency, recognition and respect that he deserves from the architectural community is long overdue.

The latest issue of Docomomo International's journal has arrived in mailboxes worldwide. Journal 52: Reuse, Renovation, and Restoration addresses the challenge of dealing with modern architectural heritage in relation to its continuously changing physical, economic, political, and scientific context.

Join Docomomo US on Saturday, August 15th for a special full-day tour of Modern Homes of Litchfield, Connecticut. This summer tour offers guests a unique opportunity to visit an exceptional collection of modern homes designed by architects such as Marcel Breuer and fellow Harvard 5 architects, John Johansen, and Eliot Noyes. The Modern Homes of Litchfield tour will begin with an overview at the Litchfield Historical Society and include 4 Marcel Breuer designed homes with the last home, Stillman House (which happens to be a 2014 Modernism in America Design Citation of Merit recipient), including a reception.

Docomomo US is pleased to support our friend organization North Carolina Modernist Houses' newest venture: USModernist Radio – a podcast that aims to explore the many facets of Modern architecture. Created by Modernist Houses founder George Smart, the podcast is described as “fun and sometimes irreverent” and features “interesting and expressive people who enjoy, own, create, dream about, preserve, love, and hate modernist architecture.”

In Atlanta, Georgia, the community of Buckhead is facing renewed development and threats to important historic resources, including modern buildings along its Peachtree Road corridor. A survey by the Atlanta Regional Commission recently identified a significant collection of modern architecture along Buckhead's portion of the famous thoroughfare.

Preserving a modernist house can be a challenging process that requires a range of skills: observation, historical research, and sense for design. Equally important is the skill of patience if one hopes to learn to enjoy the process. Unlike a classic automobile that must be returned to its original condition in order to hold its value, the preservation of a modernist house that has undergone inappropriate ‘improvements’ requires a creative approach that combines an understanding of history with an appreciation for the future. In short, one must be able and willing to move history forward.

Sacramento’s Capitol Towers is a little-known but excellent example of modernist urban housing. Built between 1959 and 1965 as the residential element of Sacramento’s first realized urban redevelopment project, its all-star design team emphasized human-scaled urban living that mixed low-rise garden apartments in a park-like setting with a modern high rise and a public plaza at the heart. The resulting assembly of vertical and horizontal building elements, linked by landscaped spaces and a now-mature tree canopy, created a well-scaled, well-planned, and highly livable community.

A year has passed since the Coast Community College District in Costa Mesa, California announced a new master plan titled “Vision 2020” that threatened buildings designed by Richard Neutra and Robert Alexander and Garrett Eckbo designed landscapes with demolition. A draft Program Environmental Impact Report found that these buildings and landscapes were of historic significance and eligible for designation on the National Register of Historic Places.Docomomo US SoCal and other advocates called for a more environmentally reponsible approach that incorporated these buildings into the master plan instead of replacing them with a "grand lawn." Now the environmental review process is nearing completion and soon a decision will be made whether these significant buildings and landscaped will be saved.

After facing the threat of demolition and an uncertain future, Dallas’ historic Statler Hilton Hotel, will be entering a new chapter in October 2016 as a mixed-use hotel, residential, and retail center. Designed by New York architect William Tabler, the Statler was lauded in 1956 at its opening as “the first and finest hotel of the modern era.” The current owners, Centurion American Development, secured 46.5 million dollars from the city of Dallas and announced in April it would be partnering with Hilton's Curio Collection.